Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP17210
Authors: Leonardo D'Amico; Guido Tabellini
Abstract: We study how individuals comment on political news posted on Reddit’s main political forumduring the 2016 US Presidential Election. We present two main findings. First, oppositepartisan users comment on the same news sources, but on different news. Second, partisanusers behave very differently from independents if the news is bad for a candidate. Comparedto independents, partisan comments on bad news are less frequent on the own candidate, andmore frequent on the opponent. The content of the comments also suggests that partisan usersare less likely to accept bad news on their candidate, and more likely on the opponent. Thisbehavior is consistent with motivated reasoning, and with the predictions of a model of rationalinattention where the cost of attention depends on whether the news is pleasant or unpleasant.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: No JEL codes provided
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| partisan users (D72) | lower likelihood of commenting on bad news about their candidate (D79) |
| partisan users (D72) | higher likelihood of commenting on bad news about their opponent (D79) |
| bad news about candidate (D79) | lower likelihood of commenting by partisan users (J79) |
| bad news about opponent (C72) | higher likelihood of commenting by partisan users (D72) |
| event study results (G14) | significant decrease in comments by Trump supporters (Y70) |
| event study results (G14) | increase in engagement by Clinton supporters (D79) |